


In the Winter, Extra Blankets

by A M Sinclair (phoebesmum)



Category: Quantum Leap
Genre: Episode Related, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 20:52:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/A%20M%20Sinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the other side of the looking-glass, Verbena Beeks Observes Sam's Leap into his own younger self.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Winter, Extra Blankets

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in _Present Tense_ , AAA Press, circa 1995.
> 
> The flipside of _The Leap Home, Part I_

_May 29, 1997_

It should have been the day we'd all been waiting for.

It began as it always does: with Ziggy sending up flares and letting off sirens to let us know that we have an arrival in the Waiting Room. Sometimes I get there in time to see him, her, it materialise; not often. I plan it that way. It's disconcerting, to see an empty bed one moment, the next a hazy outline, and the next a living, breathing, solid human body. Like something out of **_Star Trek_**. Or worse. So I try to time it so that I get there a moment or two after our temporary visitor does. I tend to collide in the doorway with Al, which leads me to suspect that he has the same reaction. Something we should discuss, no doubt. Later.

I can't cut it very much finer than that moment or two, because monitoring-stroke-reassuring is my designated job: check vital signs, watch for symptoms of shock (normal, understandable), hysteria (likewise), violence (justifiable, I sometimes think, but unwelcome), all the while going through a calming, supportive, welcoming spiel: "... please be assured that no harm will come to you, and that we will attempt to cause you the least possible inconvenience ..." You know the sort of thing. Three out of every five people, hearing it, promptly ask me to take them to my leader, which moves me to think that perhaps I could do with a rewrite ... but, as ever, when do I have the time? And yes, I know that that's ironic, all things considered, but I can't help it.

I always finish up by asking them their name. And the date, and their location. If they're prepared to tell us, it can save Ziggy hours of research - hours which, we're uncomfortably aware, may sometimes be vital. Life or death. The question always being - _whose?_

This time, when I asked him his name, he said, "Sam." Which is not the most uncommon of first names, but still - I doubt whether mine was the only heart that skipped a beat or two. And, as we all stood holding our collective breaths, the familiar features gave a little, equally familiar, frown. "Sam Beckett ..." he said, as though in wonder. And then he looked up at me, and he smiled. Quite charmingly, and without the slightest hint of recognition. _The lights are on, but there's nobody home ..._ "Should I know you?" he asked.

Shock, hysteria, violence. I was tempted to give way to them all. I'm a professional, however, and it's up to me to set a good example. And no-one had ever guaranteed that Leaping home would automatically cancel out the Swiss-cheese effect. There _are_ no guarantees in my job.

I kept my voice level and soothing ("like a spoonful of cough syrup," as Sam himself had once so generously described it). "Why don't you just tell us the last thing you remember?" I prompted.

The frown again. "I'm ... not ... sure ..." he said, very slowly, and he sat up - too quickly, I could see that it dizzied him, and I moved to support him. Which gained me another beautiful, heartbreaking smile. He had ... he used to have perfect recall. Now he doesn't even remember _that_. But _this_ Sam was clearly not accustomed to being unable to remember, and you didn't need a psych degree to see that it distressed him.

"It's okay, Sam," I told him. "Don't try too hard. Just - whatever comes into your head."

He sat up straighter and started to look around, take stock of his surroundings. "I was ... just walking home ..." There is not much in the Waiting Room to take stock of; for obvious reasons it's kept as featureless as possible, giving no clues as to location or era. What few fitments and furnishings are in there are a uniform sterile white, chilly and functional, although the imaging effect throws a phosphorescent blue glow over everything which gives an atmosphere that is not so much eerie, more like a bad science fiction movie. Personnel is likewise kept to a bare minimum: normally just myself, Al, a medic and a security guard in case of need - but, today of all days, we had the unwelcome addition of Colonel Gerard B Marston, the Senate Sub-Committee's spy-of-the-month. _Oh, Sam. **Great** timing!_

Sam, meantime, had reached the same conclusion as so many of our uninvited guests. "Is this a hospital?" Then, as that thought took hold, "Did something happen - have I been sick? Was there an accident? Are my parents okay?" With each question his voice grew a little faster, a little shriller ... a little _younger_. "What's _happening?_ "

I exchanged glances with Al, who had just stepped through the door and was now standing back against the far wall, out of the new arrival's line of vision, his face set in an anxious frown. _His parents?_ I was starting to get a bad - no, a _worse_ \- feeling about all this.

"It's kind of a hospital, Sam, but there's no need to be afraid. Try not to get upset. You're fine, nothing's happened to your parents, everything's okay." _For now, and so far as we know. Faut de mieux_ I went back to my standard line of questioning. "Can you tell me what year this is?"

His head swung around sharply; he stared at me as though I were insane. A common reaction. Probably not an unreasonable one. "What _year?!_ "

I tried again. "How old are you Sam?"

"Sixteen," he said helplessly, and my heart sank. That could mean one of two things: either he was in psychotic trauma and had mentally regressed to childhood, or else he was _not_ the Sam Beckett we had thought and this was only a Leap, just like any other. Well - maybe not _quite_ like any other. I didn't care for either option. "I'm sixteen. Please - " He caught at my sleeve, "can't you tell me what's happening?" And then he looked up. He saw himself in my eyes, and his own eyes widened. He dropped my hand, and held out his own hands, looking at them, turning them over and over. "What _year_ ...? Have I been in a coma ... or something ...?" He shook his head swiftly, instantly dismissing the thought. "No, my hands still look the same ..." He glanced down at himself. "No signs of atrophy ... so that can't be it." He squirmed around and slid over the edge of the support couch before I could stop him, half-lurched over to the closest wall; caught himself against the ceramic surface, pulled away, and stared into the reflection that stared back at him. "That _is_ me," he realised, and swung about to face us all, a huge, delighted grin starting to spread across his face. "When? Twenty years in the future? More?" He looked back at himself over his shoulder, grimaced slightly. "Guess I got my dad's looks after all."

"Sam - " I said warningly. This _was_ Sam, after all, if not the Sam we had hoped for, and I was achingly aware of Marston's hawklike alertness. _Be careful, baby - the walls have ears._ "Don't - "

"So I _do_ know you," he decided, and headed back to us, folding himself onto the couch beside me. "We work together? Right? When is this? Nineteen eighty ... ninety-something, must be. Someone actually decided to fund fourth-dimensional research?" He sat back on his heels, almost bouncing with excitement. "Far out! I thought I was gonna have to just cop out and be a doctor, or go work for NASA, or something, because, you know, I have all these ideas about applying the tenets of quantum mechanics to cosmic string theory and using it as a basis to unlock the whole _universe_ \- "

 _Say, what?_ I thought. I was lost already. And he'd barely gotten started.

" - but everyone I've ever tried to explain it to just looks at me like I was straight out of **_The Twilight Zone_** , so I figured that maybe I was wrong, or else that no-one - "

"Admiral," Marston said gratingly.

Everyone in the room turned toward Al; even Sam stopped chattering for a moment. Long enough for the medical orderly at my side to move around behind him and, at a barely perceptible nod from Al, take his wrist, almost unnoticed. There was the gentle hiss of a hypodermic; then blessed silence.

Which was broken by an exaggerated sigh and shiver from Marston, who swept us all with an accusing glare before focusing on Al.

"What's going on here, Admiral?" He stalked across to the couch, glowered down at the white-clad body slumped across it. "All your previous reports have indicated that Doctor Beckett is travelling in time through other people's lives. Are you now trying to convince me that this _is_ Doctor Beckett?"

Al took his eyes off Sam's still face long enough to cast Marston a glance that I could only pray the other man could not interpret. _I_ could. "I'm not trying to convince you of anything, sir." The _sir_ was a nice touch, given that Al - I think - outranked Marston. He looked at me, silently confirming what I had already realised. "But all the indications are that what we're dealing with here _is_ Doctor Beckett. Sam at age sixteen." _Indications_ was for Marston's benefit: Al would know for sure. He had surreptitiously and unauthorisedly had Ziggy adjust his perception so that he could always see Sam _as_ Sam and the person Sam replaced as himself. Herself. Whatever. It was too confusing otherwise, he said, and any more confusing than we already had, he didn't need. "He's Leaped into his own past life. Into _himself_."

"If that's true," Marston said ( _and why should I believe **you**?_ his voice implied), "then, in other words, _this_ version of Doctor Beckett is presently in his own future."

Al just nodded. _Well, obviously!_

Marston was clearly outraged. "May I take it that you're aware of the risk involved here, Admiral?"

Al nodded again. His expression was blandly polite; the set of his shoulders told me he was seething with suppressed anger. "That's why I had the medical team put him under, Colonel. Standard code one procedure. _Any_ Leap that directly involves any member of Project personnel is automatically designated a code one emergency."

 _Oh, yeah?_ I thought sardonically. _What about the time when you were so obsessed with getting your ex-wife back that you almost got Sam's partner killed? You sure kept **that** little detail out of the picture, Admiral. We might as well have put **you** under, for all the help you were to him then._

Marston - late middle-aged, right-wing, for-god-guns-guts-and-glory, a frozen-faced stiff at the best of times - cast another dispassionate glance down at the unconscious face turned into the pillow. Peter, the orderly, was gently easing Sam into a more comfortable position, covering his tumbled limbs with a blanket, checking his pulse and his breathing again. Routine stuff; he could do it, any of us could, in our sleep. I nodded to him to leave it, I'd take over. He flicked a surreptitious, sidelong look toward Marston, then rolled his eyes upward to heaven. I nodded again: total agreement. He backed off, mouthing something that might have been, _Be my guest_ , and made his escape.

"So, if I understand the mechanics of Doctor Beckett's ... _Leaping_ \- " He said it with distaste, as though it were a disease, "correctly, and this _is_ Doctor Beckett at age - what did he say?"

"Sixteen," I repeated tonelessly. _Haven't you listened to a word we've said?_

"Sixteen." He didn't even acknowledge me. Black? Female? Half his age and approximately ten times smarter? Why should he? He was probably waiting for me to go make us all coffee. "Then that would imply that, for the subject, the year is currently ..." Whoa, _major_ arithmetical effort here. "... 1968?" _And_ he got it wrong. He suddenly skewered first Al and then me with a basilisk glare. "And you do fully comprehend the implications should Doctor Beckett return to - "

Was he singing that old song again? Yes, of _course_ we understood the damn implications! What did he think we've been doing for the past two years? We undoubtedly understood them a whole lot better than he did. I cut him off. "Sam," I corrected him.

His head snapped around. "What?"

"Sam," I said again, wearily. "If it's 196 _9_ \- " I stressed the 'nine', "to him, and he's still only sixteen, then he doesn't even have one doctorate yet. Isn't that right, Admiral?" I looked deliberately toward Al. "You've known him longer than any of us." _And you're supposed to be his friend. Remember?_ I hadn't forgiven him for the hypodermic yet. Tempting though it sometimes used to be to shut Sam up by any means necessary - a pillow over the face, if need be.

"Actually," Al observed, in a casual sort of way, "he _had_ started working toward his first degree in early '69. He began his foundation courses in mathematics while he was still in high school," he explained to Marston, kindly, as though making allowances for the cerebrally challenged. "But, no, no doctorate. Doctor Beeks is absolutely right."

Marston blew out a little steam. I watched hopefully for signs of a coronary, but my prayers went unanswered. " - _Sam_ \- " he said heavily. "Should _Sam_ return to 1969 retaining any knowledge whatsoever of his present circumstances."

"All the indications are that the Swiss-cheese effect - Leap-induced amnesia," I clarified, for Marston's benefit, "is a two-way process," I said. _So shove **that** , Colonel!_

"It does give rise to some interesting conjectures," Al admitted. "And some potential paradoxes, of course." He set his shoulders, took up the oratorial stance that he's perfected over twenty years of lecturing and speech-giving, and launched into his snake-oil-salesman routine. "In theory, just his being aware of the existence of Project Quantum Leap in his own future could result in its never being created, which would result in our current timeline being nullified, in which case none of _this_ \- " He indicated the Waiting Room, the corridors beyond, the whole Project, with a sweep of his hand, "would exist." He strolled up to my side, glanced down at Sam; only I saw the flash of tenderness in his eyes. Only I would have known to look for it. "It's a variation," he went on, "on the classic 'grandfather' paradox, in which the time-traveller returns to a time before his birth and - "

" - shoots his own grandfather, yes, I know!" Marston finally managed to break into the flow. But not for long.

"Or grand _mother_ ," Al stressed. A nice touch. Blind 'em with irrelevancies, leave them straining at gnats and swallowing camels. "In fact, the contradictory nature of the argument eliminates the possibility. If it were feasible for Sam to have erased our existence in the past, then he would already have done so, in which case we wouldn't be having this conversation now. _Capite?_ " He grinned then, rather like an alligator. "Although I don't think we ought to eliminate the other school of thought - the one that implies that Project Quantum Leap would not have been built had Sam not _already_ made this Leap into the future ..."

Nobody can do a snowjob quite like Al Calavicci. One trembles to think of the sticky situations he must have had to talk himself out of in the course of his chequered and occasionally rather dubious career. _I_ was ready to scream and run for cover by that point. But Marston was still on his feet; somewhat bemused and punch-drunk, but fighting bravely on. To the death, no doubt. I guess that they must have given him all those shiny medals he's so proud of for something, if only for killing a lot of perfect strangers. "Nonetheless, Admiral, I must insist, as a matter of the most utmost and urgent security, that you keep Doctor Beckett - Sam - confined to this area and, if necessary, under sedation for the duration of this - " That moue of distaste again, " _Leap_."

Al's control almost slipped. "We're containing the risk, Colonel," he said, barely patiently. "We'll continue to do so. I can assure you of that."

"You had better," Marston said, and the look he threw us was far from friendly. "Do I make myself clear?"

Al smiled pleasantly and met his eyes with a limpid, innocent gaze. "Oh, yes, Colonel," he said sweetly. "Absolutely clear."

The implied threat was that if we _couldn't_ 'contain the risk', then he'd send in government stormtroopers to do so. And they wouldn't be polite about it.

 _Fascist pig_ , I thought.

Marston looked at me then, almost as though he'd heard me. I looked back at him. Stonily. "Doctor?" he asked.

"Quite clear," I snapped.

All that stuff is true, to a certain degree. Security, paradoxes, not letting the past compromise the future - and vice versa - all like that. But me, I'm a product of the sixties. Liberated. Independent. Free-thinking. I don't enjoy being told what to do by jumped-up self-important little dictators with their brains in their balls, blood on their hands, and a mess of scrambled egg on their hats.

And I had not enjoyed the look of betrayal in Sam's eyes as he realised what we had done to him.

No. I hadn't liked _that_ \- not one little bit.

Particularly as those eyes happened to be fixed on _my_ face at the time: beseeching, imploring ...

I ought to be immune to the Sam-Beckett-puppy-dog-eyes by now. Considering everything. But I'm not.

***

"Was that a threat?" I demanded of Al, as soon as Marston had gone through the door. "Are you going to let him get away with that?"

He shrugged; pulled out a cigar, gazed at it wistfully and, at my glower, tucked it away again. "He has a point, you know. Half the reason Sam became so ... entranced, I guess the word is, with time travel in the first place is because so much crap went down in his life, just at the wrong time."

I raised an eyebrow. "The wrong time being ...?"

He just looked at me. "Like you don't know. Like his brother dying. The year he, Sam, turned sixteen." His eyes strayed again to Sam's face; the face of the child that only he could see. "That's _this_ year to him, Verbeena. And like his dad losing the farm. Or his sister running away from home and taking up with a guy who hit her around. His dad dying when Sam was twenty one. Like a lot of things. A lot of things that Sam is gonna think he's being given a chance to change ..."

I lifted two fingers and held them to his head. "Bang, bang," I said softly, "you're dead."

He gave me another of his looks. "I may be many things, 'Beena," he said dryly, "but Sam's grandfather is _not_ one of them. What I _am_ ," he went on, "is his friend. I hope. I hope I can stay that way ..."

I squared my shoulders and looked him in the eye. "You _hope_ , Admiral. I _intend_ to stay that way."

"Do you, 'Beena?" he asked, and smiled, a little sadly. "You couldn't hold on to what you had before - could you?"

If there's one fringe benefit to my training, it's that people can say that sort of thing to me and I can let it flow right on over.

Lucky for Al. Because otherwise he'd still be looking for his liver.

"Don't you have an Imaging Chamber waiting for you, Admiral?" was all I said; a little coldly, maybe, but who could blame me? "You can leave the _security risk_ ," I said nastily, "to me. I guess I can deal with a sixteen-year-old kid all by myself."

"That's not just any sixteen-year-old kid," he reminded me. _Thanks, Al. Like I didn't know._ "Be careful."

" _You_ be careful, Admiral," I told him. "Like you just said, this isn't going to be easy for him. Try not to screw him too badly this time, okay? He still trusts you." In spite of Beth. In spite of everything. "Though only god knows why," I murmured, as the door closed behind his most gratifying wince. All of which was a little unfair of me, I know; but it disturbs me, this dependency that Sam - of all people, _Sam_ , who never really needed anyone in his life - has developed toward Al. I do trust Al - up to a point - but a relationship like that is wide open to abuse.

All in a day's work, I suppose.

That just left me. And Sam. And a faceless man in uniform, who was definitely surplus to requirements. I told him so, and he went away.

And then there were two.

I fetched my embroidery - oh, don't laugh! It's self-consciously quaint, I know, and the rec room really doesn't need any more cushion covers, but it's mindless and soothing, and it gives me something to do with my hands - and a book, and I set the coffeemaker going, and I pulled up a chair and settled in for a long vigil.

It was only an hour or so later when I heard the first sounds of movement, so I forgave Al - a little. Sam never has been the best at knowing when to keep his mouth shut, and the less Marston and his buddies knew about what Sam knew, the better. And at least Al hadn't hit the kid too hard ...

 _The kid._ Now, _that_ was something I would have to keep in mind.

First things first. I put my stuff away, and shifted over to his side, reaching a hand to his shoulder.

 _Damn. It would help - help a **lot** \- if I didn't perceive him as Sam. As **my** Sam._

"How're you feeling?" Only the most inane question in the world. _Like someone just shot my veins full of crap._

"Sick." His voice was faint, muffled by the hands pressed over his mouth. I pulled them away, helped him out of bed, and half-carried him into the bathroom.

He was right, poor baby. He _did_ feel sick. Very sick indeed. Medical diploma or no, this is not something I find a lot of fun. Still, I held his hair away from his face while his system purged itself of its toxins, eased him down to sit on the floor afterward, fetched him a glass of cold water, and then another, mopped his face clean with a damp cloth.

"Better?" I asked after a while. He nodded, barely; peered up at me through reddened eyes.

"Why - ?" he managed, his voice very small and subdued. I laid a comforting hand on his arm, holding in a rising sense of fury. I don't get a kick out of cruelty to children.

"You're the genius, Sam. You tell me."

He essayed a shaky smile, glanced down at my hand, laid his own hand over it. "Oh ..." It was a long sigh, and he tilted his head back, closing his eyes. "The grandfather paradox," he said at last, without looking up. "I'm my own security breach. I wonder why I never thought of that ...?"

"The system doesn't work the way you meant it to," I said, unthinking, and caught myself up. "I mean - "

He did look at me then, and smiled, a real smile. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that." The smile faded. "So, I'm in the future - but I just have to stay in here?" 'Here' was a sweep of the hand indicating the bare, blank walls, the minimal furnishings, the dull blue lighting. "I can't see anything - do anything - ?"

"You'll see it, Sam," I consoled him. "It'll be here waiting for you. When you're ready for it."

"But meantime, I'm living my own past ...?" He frowned. "Why? Why would I want to go where I've already been? Just for _nostalgia?_ Oh, sure - 'Hey, kid, here's two billion dollars, why dontcha take yourself back to 1969 and see your folks?'"

Put that way, it did sound improbable, I had to admit.

"It's a two-way street, isn't it?" he observed; he sounded abstracted, as though he were thinking aloud. "Why didn't I incorporate that into - ?" His head suddenly snapped up and he stared at me, as though my earlier words had only just registered. "Doesn't _work?!_ Why would I invent a time machine that doesn't work? Let alone use it," he added as an afterthought. "That doesn't make any sense. I'd've been dealing with absolutes by this point, not abstracts, and it's not as if I could've reversed a figure, or something - everything would've been checked and double-checked and double-double-checked ..."

"Sam - " He was sliding on thin ice here. Here in the bathroom we had a modicum of privacy from Ziggy's ever-present monitors, but nonetheless, any moment now he was going to step over into forbidden territory and we were going to have security streaming all over us. "Sam, just let it be. Can you do that?" I laid a hand to his arm, caught his eyes with mine and held them: _I mean it, Sam. Let it go._

His eyes widened with understanding. He nodded. "Okay. But when it comes round to _my_ turn - "

"When it comes round to your turn," I interrupted quickly, before he could get started again, "all the indications are that you'll have forgotten all about this. You'll get on with your life, and when the time comes that you meet us all again, you'll wonder if there's really anything in reincarnation, or you'll put it down to déjà vu, and then you'll forget that too." _Or else_ , the look I gave him warned.

He favoured me with a shy but mischievous grin. "I have total recall," he reminded me softly.

"Sam," I said, equally soft, "shut _up_. Right now. Okay? Now," I went on, changing the subject firmly, "what're we going to do with you while you're here?"

"Could we come out of the bathroom?" he asked with deceptive meekness. Anyone who didn't know him might have imagined that he had reconciled himself to making the best of a bad situation. _I_ , however, was well aware that Sam Beckett, whether at forty three or at sixteen, was a spoiled brat who didn't know the meaning of the word 'no'. The scowl I turned on him told him so. It may also have told him that I loved him still, in spite of it. I've tried my best to keep that from showing, but my best, as I'm sometimes uncomfortably aware, isn't always quite good enough.

"Yes," I said, through gritted teeth, "we-can-come-out-of-the-bathroom. _If_ you can promise me that you have no more cookies to toss."

He held up a hand: scout's honour. "Not a one, 'Beena. Promise." And then, gazing up at me, eyes wide, his voice a whisper - so, he _had_ guessed the presence of the monitors - "Verbeena ... _how did I know your name?!_ "

My own hands were shaking now. _Who are you, Sam? How much of you is the child, how much the man I used to know?_ "You heard - " _Al_. "The Admiral ... he called me by my name ..."

He was shaking his head in denial. "No. I didn't."

"Subconsciously," I insisted, raising my voice to drown him out. "While you were asleep. You heard him."

 _Because the displacement is never one hundred percent. Because a little part of your neural matter is still Sam Beckett's - the man you were, the man you will be. Because the damn machine didn't **work** , you blasted cocky brat, and it came **this** close to killing you ..._

 _... and for what?_

 _To fly a 'plane, to win a baseball game, to ride a horse, to build a chapel?_

 _To reunite a lost love?_

 _Equals and opposites, Sam. You're a physicist. You should know these things._

 _You can't step into a pool and not cause ripples ..._

 _Did you never wonder what the waves might wash away?_

 _Did you ever even care?_

 _ **Did** you?_

I dumped him back onto the couch. "In any case, young man, you can call me 'doctor'." I grinned cheerfully, to show I was kidding. Although I wasn't. What I needed here was some detachment.

What I needed was to get _out_.

His shoulders lifted and fell, and I pretended to myself that I hadn't noticed how the cling of the Fermi suit emphasised each ripple of muscle. "Okay, doc. Whatever you say." He settled himself against the headrest, absently reached down and pulled the sheet up to his waist; looked at me, considering, rather like an entomologist presented with a fascinating new species of beetle. "So. I'm travelling in time. Actually living other people's lives ... right? Oh," he said, insincerely, as I cast him a dagger-glance of warning, "is that classified? I'm sorry. But you all seemed to know exactly what to do when I got here, so I guess this isn't the first time, huh? I must've been doing this for a while. And it'd get real old, real fast, just going back in _my_ life over and over. So, what do you normally do with your - um, visitors? Just shut them in here and let them count the walls for however long it takes for me to do ... whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing?" He shook his head bemusedly, crooking a faint smile. "I foresee a whole stack of civil liberties suits piling up against us when word gets out ... do we have a good lawyer?"

He was getting talkative again, which was either a sign of over-confidence or of extreme nervousness. I used to think I was good at reading Sam. I found out the hard way that, for all my professional expertise, I hadn't known him at all. I looked at him coldly.

"It depends on the individual," I told him. "Some arrive pretty much out of it, and stay that way." We would skip over the distressing subject of how that affected me - affected all of us who had been Sam's friends and who, unlike Al _(lucky Al!)_ still saw Sam's aura, saw _Sam_ traumatised, terrified, fighting or screaming or catatonic. "A surprising number take it as a matter of course that they've been abducted by aliens, and, once they realise they're not going to be harmed, they settle back and enjoy the ride. For which rather disturbing state of affairs," I observed, "I blame **_Unsolved Mysteries_**. No, forget I said that," I added, before he could ask. I felt the beginnings of another grin creeping out. "We had one woman - a divorced mother with three incredibly rowdy children - who just took the whole thing as a wonderful chance to have a holiday, read all the books and watch all the movies she'd never quite managed to catch."

The shoulders lifted again. "Books would be good. If you think you can find enough to keep me going." Another mischievous glance. "I speed-read, you know."

"I know," I said repressively. "Nor may you have anything published post-November 1969." A thought, possibly an inspiration, struck me. "Wasn't there something ... didn't you once beat a computer at chess?"

I'd thought this, which had always seemed to me like a very real accomplishment, would be something he'd feel justified in bragging about. But, it seemed, I was wrong. His acknowledging nod was accompanied by a small, wry smile, and the slight, shy, dip of the head that is so very much Sam's trademark. "Yes," he said slowly, "I did. When I was ten. But it wasn't really that big of a deal ... it wasn't such a terribly advanced model, and all it could do was function logically. And logical moves in chess are all well and fine, but it's the illogical, unexpected play that decides the game." He brightened. "Computers are a whole lot more advanced now, though, right?" He tilted his head sidelong and looked at me hopefully: _walkies?_ "Are you gonna let me talk to one? Expose me to all that advanced technology? You sure that's _safe_ , doctor?"

I breathed out a sigh. "Sam," I said gently, "I've been very patient with you. I know you're disorientated and scared, and I'm making allowances. But if you don't stop trying to needle me, I'm going to walk out of this room _now_ , and leave you with four blank walls to stare at until whatever's happening in '69 is over and done and you can go back where you belong - however long that takes. Do you hear me?"

He recoiled, backing up until he could go no further, the bedsheet crumpled between hands that had tightened into fists. "I didn't ask to be brought here!" he retorted; then, without warning, he brought his hands to his face, and swung away from me. "I know!" he cried out, stifled. "I know. It's all _my_ fault, or it has been, or it's gonna be. I'm _sorry_ , okay?" He dragged his hands down his cheeks, wiping away the sudden flurry of tears. "If it makes you feel any better," he said, very tightly, "I am _not_ enjoying this."

For a moment I'd almost forgotten who I was dealing with. I reached for his hands instinctively; somehow found myself holding him. Aware, only too aware, that Sam's body was having the same effect on me as it had ever had. Aware, too, that this was _not_ Sam; this was a child, a hurt and lost child in need of my help, my comfort. No more.

After a few moments, a small voice defiantly informed me, "I am _not_ crying, Verbeena." And sniffed, to prove it.

I held him a little tighter, his shoulders rigid under my touch.

"No, honey," I lied. "Of course you're not."

And neither - of course - was I.

***

It's the commonest fallacy: to believe that, simply because a person has a psychiatric degree, she has complete understanding and control of her every situation. People come to me for advice, or simply to talk; well, fine. That's what I'm trained for. But they look at me, and they see that my life is less than entirely perfect, and somehow they seem to think that that makes me less able.

I am, in fact, excellent at my job. But I'm only a poor, hard-working shrink. I'm not god.

I knew as soon as I opened the door to my office that I was not alone.

"I hope you're not drinking my Scotch there, Admiral," I observed, as I turned up the lighting.

Al was in the big wing chair behind my desk, lying back, feet crossed at the ankle, gaze fixed upon some invisible point in the distance. Comfortable, relaxed.

Yeah. Right.

He swivelled the chair in my direction and scowled at me. "I am _not_ drinking your Scotch, Beeks," he told me; low, gravel-voiced. "I'm drinking your mineral water." He held up his glass and an empty bottle to prove his point. "I shan't be drinking _anyone's_ Scotch until Sam gets back from wherever-the-hell-he's-been." Al had been teetering on the brink of alcoholism when I'd first known him. By some means unknown (a little kindness, I suspected, and a _lot_ of cruelty), Sam had succeeded in helping him get it under control. These days, the Admiral wouldn't allow himself more than a couple of light beers unless Sam was there to help him help himself. And, since no Sam ... "What's more," he added, with some energy, "this is a government project, and you have no business having hard liquor on the premises."

Remember what I said about the military mind and the esteem in which I hold it? "Number one," I said, "the government may have an interest in Project Quantum Leap now, but last time I checked our status we were still classified as an independent." _Probably to save the effort of scrambling a cover-up if the whole thing goes phut,_ I reflected. "Secondly, I happen to be a civilian, and what I keep in my office is my own damn business. And, finally - " I opened the cupboard under my desk, pulled out the first-aid box, and extracted the bottle of pure malt Scotch from within, "it just so happens that it's for strictly medicinal purposes only. You got a problem with that?"

"Broads," he said, in disgust. (Only Al could get away with sitting in _my_ office - in my _chair_ \- in the year 1997, and referring to me as a 'broad'. And I really don't know how he does it, or why I let him.) "Women never can figure that you just want to have _one_ answer, and stick with it. Three makes it sound like you're making excuses. Suspicious as all hell. Wanna discuss it with Marston?"

"Sure," I said, feigning enthusiasm. "Send him in. Bring 'em _all_ on!"

He was looking at the glass in my hand with undisguised longing. I swirled the liquid around the rim, smiling a little evil smile to myself.

"Also," he added, "I thought current medical thinking was against giving alcohol to trauma patients?"

"The hell with the patients," I said flatly. "This is for _me_. What're you doing here anyway, Al? Did you kill Marston yet?"

"I got the means, I got the motive ... I just can't seem to get the opportunity." He lay back in my chair again. I noticed that he hadn't offered to give it up to me and made a mental note to add a few question marks to his annual psych profile. Hah. That'd larn 'im. "I'm seriously starting to think about getting in the Accelerator and going back to make damn sure that Pa Marston never, ever, ever meets Ma Marston. It's twenty years out of the kid's timeline, so there's no point leaving it to _him_ ..."

"What's he done?" I asked. "Besides breathe?"

"Marston? Or Sam?"

I raised my eyebrows. "Sam too?"

"It's a classic pincer attack," he said, with some bitterness. "I'm watching Marston's mean right hook, and Sam comes round and kicks me in the ass."

I made the ultimate sacrifice and pushed my glass across the table to him. "Just one sip," I warned, and lowered my voice, glancing around conspiratorially. "I promise, I won't tell Sam."

He grabbed, with altogether too much eagerness for my peace of mind. I made sure I got the glass back right away.

"Okay," I told him, when he'd finished choking, "spill. Who's done what? And what can we do about it?"

He leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, steepling his fingers. _Look inside, and here are the people!_ "Marston got to thinking."

"Bad move," I instantly decided.

"You haven't even heard what he came up with yet!"

"I don't have to. So, give. Tell, tell, tell."

"Project Quantum Leap is Sam Beckett's brainchild - right?"

"Wow!" I said excitedly, "Hold the front page!" He shot me a very speaking look, and I subsided.

"And," he continued, "right down at nuts-and-bolts level, no-one but Sam Beckett really understands how it works. Right?"

"I thought you - "

He shook his head.

"Or Donna - ?" No. "Gushie ...?"

"Uh-uh. We all have _some_ sort of idea. We all understand whatever appertains to our own individual subjects." Ninety percent of Al's acquaintance would be astonished to discover that his vocabulary includes the word 'appertains' . What they don't know will probably kill them some day, but that's their lookout. "Some of what we know overlaps. But there are still gaps." The church collapsed, killing all the little people. And no-one even shed a tear. "Gaps that nobody but Sam can fill. _Which_ is why the men with the money haven't shut us down and ploughed over the site. The original purpose of PQL still exists; they still need us. And they _want_ Ziggy. But we can't move on and finish the job until we get Sam back. And Ziggy won't work for anyone else." By which he meant, not that nobody else understood - to a limited extent - how Ziggy worked, or was capable of using her command interfaces; he meant that, faced with anyone giving orders other than the man she seemed to regard as her father, Ziggy, in computer terms, folded her arms and announced, "Shan't!"

"Meantime," Al was saying, "we're a big black hole in the accounts ledger. A major outgoing that has no measurable return."

"I _know_ all this, Al," I said impatiently.

"I know," he said. "And Marston knows too. Unfortunately, thanks to Mister Discretion in there - " He nodded back toward the Waiting Room, "Marston also knows that we now have Sam Beckett back. _A_ Sam Beckett. And what he's thinking is that maybe we oughta hang on to the Sam Beckett that we have."

"You're not serious," I said, appalled. "What we have in the Waiting Room is a Swiss-cheesed sixteen-year-old who can barely figure out two plus two. What does Marston think - that we can put him on an accelerated learning programme and have him rewriting Einstein by the end of the month?"

Incredibly, he nodded. "Something like that."

"And what about _our_ Sam? We just abandon him back in 1969, right? What happens when he Leaps out?"

He waved the argument away. "He doesn't. We get the kid far enough away from the Accelerator so the exchange can't take place. But don't waste your time thinking logically, 'Beena. You have to have thought processes twisted up like a pretzel - not to mention the soul of an accountant - if you want to get on Marston's wavelength."

"Besides," I went on, "I thought the guy was so concerned about the _implications_ \- like Sam was going to take a wrong turn somewhere and wipe him clean out of existence." I considered this with some wistfulness. _We should be so lucky!_

"I guess I did too good a job of convincing him that the past couldn't impact on the present," Al admitted, sighing. "Since that seemed to be the main issue at the time. Me and my big mouth. It's not gonna look good now if I turn around and tell him well, hey, as a matter of fact, yes, it can. And that's not all. There's also Sam."

"There is always," I pointed out, "also Sam. Sam is a law unto himself. Always has been. I'm almost afraid to ask, but what's he done now?"

He spread out his hands. "He's home, 'Beena. And home is where he wants to stay. Him and Marston, what a team." He gave a sudden short bark of laughter. "Christ! Like he didn't have enough problems fitting in when he _was_ a kid! Can you imagine Sam going back to MIT? There wouldn't be a lecturer on campus left standing!"

"What else?" There was more; I could see it in the line of his shoulders, hear it in the words he wasn't saying.

"I told you. This was a tough time for him first time around." His eyes suddenly met mine square-on - just for a moment. Then they slid uncomfortably away. "I want him out of there before Tom dies, 'Beena. I don't want to see him go through that again ..."

This wasn't like Al, the way his thoughts kept trailing into silence. Al's thoughts come in neat little packages, complete and compact and bound up with parcel twine. I folded my arms and waited.

And waited.

"Tell me about Tom," I finally said. "I know he died in Vietnam. Sam told me that much." Although I had virtually had to drag it, kicking and screaming, out of him. "He still feels very deeply about it - about the waste, the futility." I managed to catch his eyes again. "You were in Vietnam, Al. _You_ tell me."

His fingers started drumming the table. Al has a lot of good qualities, but natural rhythm is one he is _not_ blessed with. "You're Sam's age, Verbeena. You remember the sixties. The protests. The demos and the marches. You know what it was like."

"I know," I said. Hadn't I been there? Hadn't I been out there, on the frontlines?

"After Tom died ... Sam got caught up in the antiwar movement." He was altogether too quick to qualify this. "Not as an activist, not to any great extent - he made some speeches, painted some banners, went to a few rallies. And he was always into nonviolent forms of protest, split from any group that talked about fighting fire with fire ..."

Oh. Now I understood. "That must've gone down a real storm in Elk Ridge, Indiana," I said.

He nodded. "It did. Sam and his father had a helluva fight the last time he ever went home - with the old man accusing the kid of betraying Tom's memory, and Sam telling his dad no, that it was him, John, who was betraying Tom, by sitting back and doing nothing while other men's kids kept on going out to die." He sighed. "Finally the old man threw him out - or Sam walked out, I'm not sure which. Maybe a little of both." He reached out, picked up the photo of Sam that I keep on my desk - really a group shot, taken at my birthday party three years before, a whole gang of us turned around in our chairs to smile and wave at the camera, but Sam had been sitting next to me, had helped me blow out my candles ("It's okay, 'Beena, they've got fire extinguishers!"), had hugged me afterward and kissed me 'happy birthday'. "Sam doesn't remember. He's forgotten all the bad stuff. All he remembers is that once upon a time the Becketts were one big, happy family, with a strong daddy, and a loving mommy, and that all the world was wonderful, and he wants that feeling back so bad ..."

Of course he did. If only for the security it offered: an end to the uncertainties and fears of Leaping, the joy of having one sure place to call home. Nonetheless -

"He must realise that he can't have it," I said reasonably. "Doesn't he? He must know that he doesn't belong there any more, and that when he's done what he's there to do, he'll Leap, and that'll be the end of it."

"He might _know_ it," he said irritably. "He's not admitting it. Last time I spoke to him, he was talking about _not_ doing what he had to do, not Leaping ... he wasn't making a lot of sense, if you really want the truth," he confessed. "I guess he knows it's impossible. Ah - !" He flung up his hands in sudden disgust. "I don't know _what_ he thinks! Everyone wants something they can't have, seems to me. Him. Marston." He looked at me. "Even you, Verbeena. Even you. The Leaps are getting too personal. Too close to home. Too close for comfort."

 _You bet_ , I thought. On a planet of however-many-billion people, it seems as though every other Leap holds elements of _of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world_. Donna Eleese. Diane MacBride. Nicole ... whatever-her-name-had-been. The MIT physicist who had taken young Sam Beckett under his wing, Sebastian LoNigro; Sam had brushed past him, too, almost by the way. Then Charlie Walters, 'Black Magic' Walters ... that had been the first one that had really hit Al hard; I remembered how white he had gone, ghostly in the blue glow of the Waiting Room, and how he had stared and stared at the old man, unable to speak, until Magic had finally asked him, "Do I know you, mister?" Then again, Beth Calavicci ... and now, finally, Sam Beckett ...

Oh, someone out there has a sense of humour, that's for damn sure!

Al sighed once again, seeming to gather up his thoughts. He looked tired. Well, so are we all. When we signed on for this crazy Sam Beckett carnival ride, we hadn't bargained for its being a lifetime commitment. "How's the kid?" he asked me, as though he had only just remembered.

"Impossible," I told him. "Too smart for his own good. We might as well give him the run of the place - it's hopeless trying to keep anything secret from him."

He quirked a grin. "Marston would like that. He could tell his buddies in Washington that Sam Beckett was back in control of Project Quantum Leap, and they'd all be happy."

"Until the next budget came around," I pointed out.

"Yeah, well, no-one's ever happy at budget time. It's a natural law of the universe, right up there with the toast falling butter-side-down, and always getting the looney tune next to you on the 'plane ... Maybe we oughta let him out and see how he does?" He looked at me, found a distinct lack of encouragement. "No?"

"I wouldn't try it," I said flatly.

He subsided. "Yeah. Bad idea, I guess." His expression turned altogether too knowing. "Nice-looking kid though, huh?"

My turn to sigh. "I wouldn't know," I reminded him. "I can only see Sam. Which," I added tartly, "is not helping _my_ state of mind one - little - bit. By the way, that sedative you gave him made him sick. Next time, can we just hit him with a brick?"

He looked at me with sympathy. "Puppy-dog eyes?"

"Lassie, come home," I confirmed.

He spread out his hands in acquiescence. "You're the doctor. Anything you say, goes."

 _Carte blanche!_ My wildest dream come true. "Do you want to talk to him?"

"God, no!" A look of pain passed across Al's features. Or maybe it was just indigestion. "No, thank you. _One_ Sam Beckett's all I can deal with at a time. I'll stick with the one I've got. I'm used to him. _You_ can play bringing-up-Bonzo." He smirked at me. "You're the mommy."

I swear, that man _lives_ for danger.

"Did you manage to find something to keep him out of trouble?" he was asking, apparently unaware that he had just come within an inch of being fed his own bridgework. I contented myself with a glower, and the happy prospect of what I was going to say about the Admiral in my end-of-year report.

"I think he's playing chess with Ziggy at the moment. That's what he was doing when I left him, and he promised to behave. He seems to understand - or, anyway, have a pretty fair idea just how serious this could be." Which reminded me of a little matter I had been avoiding. "Where's Donna?" I asked, possibly too casually.

"She agreed to take some leave," he told me, with a look that said yes, he _had_ noticed that I'd taken my time to get around to asking. "Just for a couple of days."

"Donna _agreed?_ " Now, _that_ was a contradiction in terms if ever I'd heard one. If Sam Beckett was going to marry, there was no way that he'd ever choose some meek little yes-dear _hausfrau_ ; but, being Sam Beckett, he'd gone to the opposite extreme and found possibly the only human being on the face of this earth more stubborn and pig-headed than himself, and with a temper that was more than a match for his own. Or, for that matter, for anyone's.

"I explained the situation to her," Al was saying. "She accepted that it might be difficult - especially for Sam."

Oh, well, that explained it. I can't pretend that Donna doesn't have her good points. Chief among them is the fact that she loves Sam. And she _does_ love him, there's no two ways about that, love that blazes like a comet, but which never seems to burn out. For that alone I could forgive her the mere fact of her existence. I couldn't have stood seeing him tied to some little bitch who didn't give a damn about him ... which could have happened; geniuses aren't necessarily immune from making bad judgement calls. _QED_. But Donna ... when Sam had been here, she'd worked alongside him, his anchor to reality, channelling his visions into a practicable and saleable product, keeping his feet - or at least _one_ foot - planted firmly on the ground, making sure that he remembered to eat, dragging him away from his lab and home to bed three nights out of every four; and now, without him, she had kept the Project alive, fought for Sam's causes tooth and nail, protecting him and his creation like a she-tiger defending her only cub.

 _(Of course, they had no children ...)_

Al would know that one hint that her meeting the younger Sam might damage him - and, god knows, it wouldn't exactly be easy for her, either - would be all it would take to keep her away from the Waiting Room, even the whole Project, for the duration.

And, then again ... the last thing Donna would want to do would be to rock the boat. To risk changing history and writing herself once again out of Sam's life ...

As she had been written out once before. And he had loved her so much that he had travelled back and changed the past just to have her back again.  
How could I argue with that?

What I remembered was impossible; had never existed, not in this timeline. The memory itself should not have existed; but it did. And I knew that it was real. That it was memory, not dream, not fantasy. _Those_ I have too. Those I know. And I know the difference.

I knew that there had been a time - not before Donna; Donna had been in the past, her name known to us only through rumour and gossip. A time _without_ Donna. A time when Sam Beckett had been the sole founder, the sole director, of Project Quantum Leap. A time when there had been no one to drag him away from his work to eat, to sleep. A time when two busy people had, somehow, found time for one another, amidst the madness, amidst the chaos. Sam and I. Friends, always. But then, lovers too.

Enough for me. The icing on the cake of my perfect life.

But not, it had turned out, enough for Sam. Who had missed the woman who had once left him more than he had needed the woman who was right there beside him.

Which, from a psychological viewpoint, made an extremely interesting case study.

I look at it that way some days.

I might even be tempted to write it up. If I thought I had a chance of getting it published anyplace other than in _**Fortean Times**_.

Those ripples that he makes: in theory, he changes something and, to us in the future, things have _always_ been that way. But, in practice, it's not always so straightforward. How often have we all misremembered something - often something trivial, sometimes something more, but something we were _sure_ of - and wondered to ourselves, are we losing our minds? Or did the world just - change?

Sometimes, maybe, we're merely losing our minds. And that's a comfort.

Because sometimes, too, the world has changed. And, if you stop to think about _that_ , the implications are pretty frightening.

Earth-shattering, in fact.

Al, I know, remembers points-of-change; not all, I think, and they fade as time passes. But I know that he, too, remembers the days without Donna.

She's there, in that photo, on the other side of Sam - _now_ she is, though before it had been Sam's secretary Livia in that place - smiling rather too brightly as her husband grabs my hand. There's no real need for her to be so defensive. She doesn't know what I know. And she knows for a fact that her marriage - certainly _now_ \- is the safest on this earth. With Donna, it's just force of habit.

I've considered all the options; I'm _fairly_ certain that it's not just wish-fulfilment fantasy. God knows, my life is full enough and happy enough: I have my career, my home, my friends, lovers when I need them, two insane Siamese for company in between times. I have no need to envy someone else their husband -

 _However strong and warm his hands, however passionate and tender his kisses ..._

I'm strong enough myself, and capable enough, not to repine; not even to be jealous.

Well ... not especially.

But there are days, minutes, hours, when I find myself alone, and when I could find it in my heart to wish ...

 _Just maybe ..._

 _... if only there were a world in which Sam had never Leaped at all!_

***

I looked in on Sam before I went back home for the night. Ziggy hadn't seemed too pleased with the younger version of her creator when I'd introduced them. But, from all appearances, they were getting on well enough now.

I just hoped she hadn't let him in on any state secrets.

"... Knight to Queen’s Bishop Four ..." Sam was saying, as I opened the door. To which Ziggy flatly replied,

"Bishop to King’s Rook Seven. And checkmate."

"No!" Sam shot upright with a yowl of protest. "How can you - ?" He paused, head on one side, evidently calling up an image of the board in his photographic memory. "O-kay," he finally decided. "I guess so. Jeez, Ziggy, you are one sneaky computer, you know that?"

"I certainly hope so," Ziggy observed, with more than her fair share of smugness. And added, rather unkindly, " _Doctor Beckett_ used to be able to beat me."

" _Doctor Beckett_ knew you altogether too well, Ziggy," I reminded her. "And you might bear in mind that Sam is Swiss-cheesed."

Ziggy huffed. "Excuses!" But Sam turned his head and smiled radiantly up at me, sending all my hormones to red alert. It wasn't helping that all he was wearing was a towel.

"How are you feeling now?" I asked him. I eyed the towel. "Want me to find you some pyjamas?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Well, I'm not putting that thing - " He gestured with a nod of the head to the discarded Fermi suit, "back on. It's scratchy. I had a shower," he explained, and added quickly, defensively, "you didn't say I couldn't!"

Taking a shower without asking prior permission probably ran counter to the Ma Beckett code of etiquette, so I made haste to reassure him. "No problem. That's what it's there for." I turned my head, aware of an irritant just at the edge of awareness. "You left it dripping, though." _Boys_! "Go turn it off."

While he was doing that, I fetched him a clean set of scrubs from MedCentre. I wasn't trusting him with his - Sam's - own clothes. Give him his shoes, and I would not be prepared to stake money on the chances of his staying put. He held the shapeless, dingy garments up for inspection with an expression of disbelief.

"And I thought the costumes in _**Things To Come**_ were bad - !" But he shrugged resignedly, and scrambled into them, much to my relief. Or disappointment. One or the other.

"Other than that," I said, going back to square one, "how are you?"

He made another face. "Bored," he admitted. "But thank you for letting me talk to Ziggy. She won't let me win at chess, but I'm doing okay at solitaire - "

"He cheats," Ziggy interrupted.

"I do not cheat!" he denied. "I just play different rules than you, that's all!"

"You play different rules than _anyone_ ," Ziggy said.

I cut in before they could descend to insults. "Yes, he does, Ziggy, and you should be grateful. If he didn't, you wouldn't be here." Which little piece of should-have-been-classified information was rewarded by the slow, bright smile that lit Sam's face.

" _I_ made _this?_ "

I nodded. "You're going to do a whole lot of things, Sam. Wonderful things. Just as soon as we get you home."

He looked up at me as though it were Christmas morning and I was Santa Claus. Although more usually I identify with the mean old Grinch. On impulse, I reached out for him and pulled him into a hug. He hugged me back trustingly, burrowing his face into my shoulder.

"Thank you, doctor," he murmured. "Thank you ... for - for caring ..."

I heaved a silent sigh. "Anytime, baby," I told him. "Any time." And reflected, a little wryly, that that was certainly true.

There seemed to be no way that I could _keep_ from caring. Not for the child. And not ever for the man.

No matter what else time might choose to alter.

***

Morning, for us, can come at any time. While Sam's in a Leap, the whole Project runs to Sam Beckett time. Which is every bit as eccentric as anything else connected with Sam Beckett. It would never occur to the guy who's pulling the strings - the guy with the sense of humour - that it would be just as easy to synchronise the time of day _then_ with the time of day _now_ so that once in a while we could all get a good night's sleep. Oh, no. Instead, we have a gang of somnolent techs firing up the Imaging Chamber at two or three or four o'clock in the morning so that Al can go and help Sam face problems that no-one should have to deal with on less than a full breakfast and half a gallon of coffee.

This Leap wasn't as bad as some. It was five thirty am, our time, when Al dragged himself into the Imaging Chamber to persuade Sam-in-the-past that he _did_ want to win his school's basketball game. I watched him go, saw the door close behind him, then headed for my office. There was no need to wake Sam yet ... well, no, truth to tell, he was probably already awake, farmboy that he was. _I_ was the one who wasn't yet ready to do battle. There were altogether too many conflicting emotions clamouring for my attention, and I was having trouble separating the ones I _could_ give way to from the ones that I absolutely _must_ not. In every other Leap, the fact that I've been dealing with Sam's image has not - no, I won't say it hasn't _bothered_ me, because it has, but because the personalities inhabiting that image have been so different, I've been able to accept them as individuals in their own right.

But this _was_ Sam; Sam as he had been twenty, almost thirty years before. And that fact led to a whole slew of complications of its own.

It occurred to me, while I was on the subject, and reflecting on Al's comment of the previous night, that I wasn't, in fact, entirely sure what the young Sam had looked like; the face that I knew was an adult one, and I found it hard to imagine it softened by youth, to erase in my mind's eye the lines of age and experience and character. From his reaction when he had caught his reflection in the Waiting Room tiles, I guessed that there must have been quite a change.

I thought that if I checked it out, if I had a picture of the sixteen-year-old to hold in my mind, to remind myself that this person with Sam's aura, with his voice, and even with so similar, if unformed, a personality, that this person was not, after all, the Sam I had once known - I thought that then, perhaps, I would be able to set aside some of the confusion that had clouded my thinking, muddled my actions, all through this present Leap.

Well. Everybody's entitled to make a mistake or two in their life.

Unfortunately, the way I'm going, I've used up the whole of my allotment for _this_ life and am currently working my way through my next-reincarnation-but-two.

I'm not a particularly motherly woman. My maternal instincts are restricted to my Siamese, and to my friends' children, the latter of whom I have the advantage of being able to hand back when they become fractious.

But my reaction when I pulled up Sam's profile on my console and flipped back to his yearbook photos ...

Okay, I admit it. I went, "Aaaawww!"

Many more of those and I'd be hanging up kitten posters and buying fluffy unicorns.

So it was in this highly positive frame of mind that I finally headed off to the Waiting Room. I knocked - I know enough about parenting to be quite aware that you _don't_ just walk in on teenage boys without knocking - and waited for a moment. Silence. Well, even farmboys are entitled to sleep a little late once in a way.

I opened the door.

The first thing I was aware of was emptiness. I knew without having to look in corners and under the couch that I was alone in there. _Oh, god_ , I thought, _don't say he's gotten out and he's running loose around the Project!_

The second thing was the sound of water running, and I realised, with a sense of relief, that Sam must be in the shower again. He's always been fairly fastidious, and I remembered him once remarking on the joys of constant hot water, spinning me a tale of how the pipes in his parents' farmhouse had been so seized up that only one person a night could ever have a hot bath, and how he and his brother and sister had traded off favours - "If _you_ slop the hogs, _you_ can have my hot water tonight ..."

I tapped on the bathroom door. "Sam? Don't wash yourself away in there, honey." And waited.

Not even an acknowledging "uh huh".

And now, somehow, quite illogically I was worried. Worried enough to forget about a teenage boy's right to privacy and to crack open the door. _Lord_ , I thought, _he's got nothing that I haven't seen before!_

The third thing I was aware of was the blood: a great splash of it up the length of one wall, another gush pooling across the once-pristine white of the floortiles. So much blood ... bright, red, vital, arterial blood ...

Not yet coagulating. Still fresh.

Still flowing - _flowing_ , no longer spurting - from the long, parallel gashes running up the inside of Sam's limp left arm, his lifeblood mingling with the water that rained down upon his still body, spilling and swirling, circling around the drainhole, flowing away to be lost forever in wastepipes and sewers and gutters ...

There was no time to react ("Oh, my god!"), no time for thoughts or feelings (though my mind was screaming). I had been moving into action even as I registered the horror, my hands quietly and efficiently detaching themselves from my emotions: spreading a towel on the floor to protect his body from the chill of the tiles, easing him out from under the flow of the water ... he made a little mewling sound in his throat as I touched him, and I might have lost it then, but there was too much to do, I was still working, propping the damaged wrist above his head and applying pressure to the bleeding, my free hand fumblingly seeking at his throat, at his ear, hunting for a pulse, _finding_ one ...

"Hold that thought, baby," I whispered to him, and yelled out loud, " _Ziggy_ \- get me a medteam, _stat!_ "

Silence.

"Ziggy! God damn it, this is no time to get _cute!_ " Reason somehow managed to overcome anger. "Ziggy," I said, forcing a measure of calm back into my voice, "this is a medical emergency. Override privacy mode." There would be time later to question the _who_ and the _how_ of the original command. And only then did I let my voice rise to a shriek. " _Now!_ "

A disembodied voice said, in injured tones, "Really, Doctor Beeks, there is no need - "

"Get me a medical team in here, right away, Ziggy," I said, low and dangerous. My hands were still moving on autopilot, pulling more towels from the rack to drape over the damp, clammy skin - not that _modesty_ held any kind of priority in my thoughts at that time, but _cold_ certainly did, and he was starting to shiver, to spasm, and next would come the convulsions that would be too much for his weakened body, that would stop his heart from beating, and that would finish it, finish it all before it had even begun ... "Don't you understand, you damn _machine_ \- this is _Sam_ , and he is _hurt!_ "

I've never heard a computer whimper before, but I don't know how else to account for the noise that Ziggy made then. And a moment later there was no turning around without tripping over one member of the medteam or another. I turned Sam over to their care without protest; I _am_ a medical doctor, of course, but I don't practise, and I have enough sense to know when to let others better able than myself take over. And I knew that, with our medical staff, with the facilities they had available, Sam was in the best hands he possibly could be.

I stood alone in the otherwise now deserted bathroom and I shook. _God, I'm too old for that kind of shock!_ My dress was soaked; water, mostly, but a Rorschach blotch of blood spread across the skirt in a kind of gruesome parody of Pop-Art. This one wasn't going to Goodwill. This one was going straight in the trash, and the hell with Al and his obsession with recycling - !

After a moment, I realised that the shower was still running. I reached in and turned it off.

Something was niggling at me. Something ... just not right. _What's wrong with this picture?_

Well, _one_ thing was very wrong with it. That I could say for certain. Sam's presence in it was wrong. I know that man as well as anyone; I've been his colleague for over ten years, I _slept_ with him for three of those years, for god's sake, I'm his friend, his confidante, one of his best buddies. And I _do_ have a psych degree. Letters after my name. Grown-up things like that. And I can tell you for a fact, there is no way, not in this world nor in any parallel one, that Sam Beckett would _ever_ harbour suicidal tendencies - still less give way to them. He won't even leave a movie until he's watched the closing credits to the very end; he would never leave the theatre before the ending of the play. To give up on _life?_ On the greatest show on earth?

No way.

Besides ... deprive the world of the wonder and the glory that is Sam Beckett? Nah, never. His ego wouldn't let him.

Trust me on this. I'm a doctor.

An anonymous face under a uniform cap stuck itself round the edge of the doorframe. "Doctor Beeks? You done in here?"

I looked up at him - no, my apologies, her, that's the effect uniforms have on me - blankly. "Excuse me?"

"We need to make our report, ma'am," the young woman explained, and looked at the red mess around the shower stall in some dismay. "And clean up ... I guess," she added, faintly.

 _Girlie_ , I thought meanly, _if you're gonna go all pale and ashen at a little drop of blood, then you're in the wrong job!_

"Yeah," I said distractedly. "Sure. I'll just be - " And then I knew what was bothering me.

We're not entirely stupid. Or lacking in forethought.

We don't leave the temporary occupants of the Waiting Room unattended; the monitors are for their protection, as much as anything. Privacy mode can only be actuated by a handful of people. Myself; Al. Donna, although Donna never goes anywhere near the Waiting Room ...

 _... or someone with enough clout to get access to the codes ..._

... and nor do we provide them with easy access to the means of doing themselves harm. No unattended pill trays. No belts or shoelaces or scarves. No knives, other than plastic ones. No razors.

And those gashes in Sam's arm had been clean, precise: a razor, I thought, or even a scalpel.

 _So - where the hell **was** it?_

"Ziggy," I said, as I walked toward the door, "get the Admiral. Get him here _now!_ "

Suicide, we were supposed to think. A brilliant mind overturned by trauma. A national tragedy. Perhaps a day of mourning ...

And then, with no chance of Doctor Sam Beckett ever returning to take control and finalise his work, Project Quantum Leap could be safely closed down. Forever.

What sort of a mind could come up with a plan like that? A plan that not only sacrificed the life of an innocent young boy, but left the man he would become trapped in the coils of a life that he had already lived?

 _A mind like a pretzel_ , I thought fiercely, _and the soul of an accountant._

***

Marston had left the Project, it transpired. He'd been called back to Washington early that morning.

 _How convenient_ , I thought.

Why had I been so complacent? I'd _known_ the man was a killer - I'd joked to myself about it, dealing with it in the only way I could. I could only thank god that he was older now, and slow, and not so deadly efficient - _efficiently deadly?_ \- as he must have been in his glory days. And that he had had the decency _not_ to believe that he could commit cold-blooded murder in the government's name and simply get away with it. All it would have taken would have been one quick bullet to the brain, and that, friends, would have been all she wrote. No more Sam; no more Project. We could make all the protests we wanted, and Marston might even end up going to gaol - though I wouldn't want to bet on it - but it would make no difference. It would be too late. _Really_ too late. Too late for the man who had staked his life on the denial of that very concept.

Who still _was_ risking his life, almost thirty years away from us, mercifully unaware of how very close he had just come to losing the gamble forever.

And, given the continuing government interest in Project Quantum Leap, what was to stop _them_ \- the ones who had given Marston his orders - what was to keep them from trying again?

"They _could_ try again," Sam was saying. His face was very pale, and he hardly had the strength to lift his head, but nothing, it seemed, could keep him from talking. Not when he had something on his mind. "What's there to stop them? This time it would have been me, and I guess that would have been convenient, but it could be _anyone_ \- anyone they think's expendable. That housewife you were talking about. Some small-town nobody." He tried to pull himself up; failed, and fell back, banging his head feebly against the pillow in frustration. "Imagine if he - if I - if he Leaped into a convict on Death Row and then he couldn't Leap out again. _Imagine_ , 'Beena!"

I could imagine. Only too clearly could I imagine. "Our security - " I began.

" _What_ security? Who screens them? How do you know they're working for _us_ \- not for _them_ \- ?"

"Sam," I said sternly, " _now_ you're being paranoid."

Somehow, faintly, he managed a smile. "I wouldn't be paranoid if people didn't keep picking on me," he said, mockingly. "But truly, 'Beena. I'm serious. You've got to - _we've_ got to take care ..."

"I don't think they'll try the same thing twice, Sam," I told him. "Not now they know that we're on to them."

"Maybe not, but they'll try something else - "

He was undoubtedly right. Like life wasn't already tough enough. "We do screen our personnel very carefully, Sam. The Admiral's in charge of security, and he - "

A puzzled look flitted across his pallid features. "The Admiral?"

A familiar voice from the doorway said, gruffly affectionate, "Hi, kid." And Al strode in, ambling over to Sam's side, deceptively casual. "I hear you had yourself a little situation here." His eyes took in the bandages enveloping Sam's left arm, the tube running into his right, the dressing above his left temple where Marston had struck him, knocking him out before dragging him into the shower and opening his veins ... His face darkened. "You okay?"

Sam looked up at him. "Al - ?" he whispered; and his voice, for a moment, was his _own_ voice. "Al!" He made as if to rise, arms reaching to his friend -

And then he fainted. Al jumped forward and caught him just before he fell out of bed.

The Admiral and I said, in perfect unison, " _Shit!_ "

I turned on him. " _Now_ see what you've done!" I said, wholly unfairly. He just looked at me. "Sorry," I mumbled, and busied myself checking that Sam's drip hadn't become detached. It had. Al averted his gaze while I fixed it. I don't know how he can be so squeamish. After all - _he's_ probably killed as many people as Marston. Some of them, no doubt, sixteen-year-old kids who had never even thought of doing him harm.

"I spoke to Diane MacBride," he was saying now. "I told her what'd gone down. The funding committee are denying all knowledge - no surprise there. Marston cut his own throat when he left Sam able to witness against him."

He didn't mean that literally, I assumed, which was a pity. "Oh, great," I said sarcastically. "I suppose we should be grateful they send us inefficient killers. He didn't do so badly, you know, Al. What'll we do if they send us a better one next time?"

"I'll take care of it," was all he said; and, for once, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, left me speechless.

We do have our differences. But when everything is said and done - I can only be glad that Al Calavicci is on _our_ side.

"You got a moment?" he was asking me now. I nodded and walked with him to the door. " _Is_ the kid okay?"

"He's alive," I said baldly. "Don't ask me what the long-term effects of all this are likely to be, because I couldn't tell you. I hope that we're right in believing that Leaping erases the memory, if only the conscious memory, of the time Sam's hosts spend here ... and, since you say that _our_ Sam seems to go through some kind of healing process in between Leaps, then perhaps the same will apply to _him_ \- " I jerked my chin back over my shoulder. "I sure hope so. Otherwise Mom and Dad Beckett are just gonna _freak_."

He just said "Um," and sneaked his own anxious look back at the kid. Then, "That's what I needed to talk to you about," he told me, and ushered me into an empty office. "Mom and Dad Beckett."

Al, as it turned out, didn't exactly _need_ me; what he needed was a sounding board. Sam-in-the-past had blithely taken it upon himself to tell his family the truth about his situation, and his family who, truth to tell, have always sounded like a singularly stolid and humourless bunch to me, were about half a step away from renting him his very own private room at the nearest County General. The kind with the soft white walls.

"I can't bear to look," Al was saying, sitting over the borrowed desk with his head in his hands. "It's like having a grandstand seat at deadman's curve. You just _know_ that sooner or later there's gonna be blood ..."

"It sounds to me like it's time you reminded Sam he's not the only person in the world who matters," I decided, glad to have a problem to hand that I possibly _could_ resolve. Unlike the ongoing problem that was the younger Sam Beckett. "Again." I can understand why Sam sometimes becomes so centred-in on himself; he's the one constant in his own world, all he can depend on, except for the occasional presence of a holographic observer who can neither be touched nor impact on the events that surround him. He doesn't realise he's doing it, doesn't do it intentionally, and, as always, we're more than inclined to make allowances for him, to let it slide. But every so often he needs a gentle kick. Sometimes a not so gentle one. This sounded as though it were one of those times. "Tell him how lucky he is. Lucky to be home."

Al looked at me as though I'd grown an extra head. Wouldn't that be just what I need? An extra head, so that I could have an extra headache whenever I thought of Sam Beckett. " _Lucky?!_ " he said incredulously.

I pulled up the chair opposite to his, plonked myself down. "Yup. That's what he'll say, too. Then you can come out with one of _your_ hard-luck stories - " I smiled just enough to let him know that I might possibly be kidding and he had better pretend to play along and believe it, "and the next thing you know, he'll be so overwhelmed with guilt, he'll be eating out of your hand for the rest of the Leap. Figuratively, that is," I added. It would be difficult to eat out of a hologram's hand. Messy, too.

Scrape of chairleg against floor: Al had stood up. "It's worth a try," he allowed, although grudgingly. Then he smiled. "You wanna hear something cute? The kid must've been going through a growth spurt lately, and you know how poor the Becketts were - so he's going round in this sweater that's two sizes too small." He smoothed down the perfectly-fitting lines of his own suit with what I would do him the credit of believing he didn't realise was a self-satisfied smirk. "Wrists and elbows everywhere. If the Nobel committee could only see him now ..."

I could imagine. And _cute_ didn't even begin to cover it.

I could only give thanks that _I_ couldn't see him now. I had enough problems of my own.

***

Sam wouldn't be Leaping for a while yet, Al told us; the basketball game he was supposed to win wasn't until the next evening. Which is something else I've never understood about this whole business. I can see where Sam might need a few hours each time to orientate himself - but _days?_ Why?

However that might be, this meant that we were safe to keep him in MedCentre overnight - not that I would have let him be moved without protest - which, I thought, might at least make a change from the Waiting Room.

And was he grateful?

No. The place was too quiet. The walls were painted a disgusting colour. He hated hospitals. The nurses kept looking at him funny ...

If he hadn't still been so tired and weak, I would've slapped him and given him something worth whining about. As it was, I breathed a sigh of relief when evening came around and I felt justified in going off duty without feeling myself to be in dereliction.

I was tempted not to go back the next morning. But, as I've said before, when it comes to my dealings with Sam Beckett, willpower becomes a thing of the past.

Sam, always unpredictable, was sitting propped up in bed, cross-legged, his hands spread out on his knees, his breathing slow and quiet and even. I went over to stand beside him, looking down at him in some perplexity.

"Now what?" I asked him. "Meditation? I know you're from the sixties, Sam, but really - !"

He looked unperturbedly up at me. "Ziggy says that in the nineties, more people are turning to alternative lifestyles than ever did in the sixties. I guess we started something, huh, doctor?"

So, we were back to 'doctor', were we? Was that a good thing, or a bad?

" _You_ might have," I said, but couldn't resist asking curiously, "Is it working?"

"Maybe." He unwrapped himself and slid back down under the bedcovers, smiling shyly at me. "Hi, doctor. Thank you for coming back again."

I lifted an eyebrow. "I see it improves your manners, if nothing else."

He looked embarrassed. More: he _blushed_. "I'm sorry. I know I - I haven't exactly been the perfect guest. My mom would kill me if she knew."

Poor Thelma Beckett. Tommy had been six when his little brother was born, already at the stage when he regularly came home covered with blood two or three times a week. Thelma must have thought she'd got the hang of raising boys. But nothing could have prepared her for the task of bringing up a headstrong baby genius with the curiosity of a score of cats and no common sense what-so-damn-ever. There hadn't been much she could do besides teach him to say 'please' and 'thank you', and hope for the best.

"It's just - " Sam was saying, "I just remembered. My brother was coming home. For Thanksgiving? From Annapolis. He's been away, I haven't seen him for so long, and I was really looking forward ..." He let it slip away with a self-conscious little wriggle. "Pretty juvenile, huh? I mean - it's not like there won't be other times ..."

 _Oh, god_ , I thought. _No, baby. There won't be other times. This would have been Tom's last Thanksgiving._

But I couldn't say that to him. Nor was I entirely sure how to cope with Sam being humble. I patted him awkwardly on the arm.

"It's okay. I won't say anything, if you don't."

His eyes became wistful again. "I've never been away from home on Thanksgiving, Verbe - doctor. My mom - "

I risked another touch to his arm. "She'll still see you. She'll see what she expects to see. That's how it works. Listen." I sat down beside him. "The _you_ that's out there - he gets pretty lonely sometimes. Can you think of this from _his_ point of view? This is his last chance ever to see his family all together again - " Whoops. Oh, well ... "The last time he'll ever have a Beckett family Thanksgiving. You don't begrudge him that much - do you?"

"Begrudge him?" he said slowly. "No. I mean - he's _me_. But doctor - he already _has_ lived this time. When he was _me_. But now, when I'm _him_ , I _won't_ have lived it. I'll have _this_ \- " An outflung hand to indicate the despised hospital surroundings, "to remember instead. And," he went on, his voice beginning to tremble, "what if it _wasn't_ me? It isn't, is it? It's not always me. And if it wasn't me - then I, the _me_ in the past - I would have taken that part of that person's life, the same way I've taken my own Thanksgiving. _Stolen_ it. And they would never get it back. Isn't that what I do, Verbeena? Isn't it?" He was shivering, although the room was climate-controlled. "Like some kind of vampire, a psychic vampire that feeds off people's feelings, their experiences, instead of their blood - I might as well take their blood! It's just as wrong, it's just as bad - "

Oh, damn Sam Beckett and his beautiful green eyes! They were fixed on mine, wide and wild and haunted. Sam Beckett with a conscience. Scary thought. I tried to calm him down. "There are reasons, Sam. I can't explain, but you do Leap for a purpose - it's not like you're doing this just for the hell of it - "

"Ends don't justify means, Verbeena! Oh, Jesus, you start thinking that way, you're building gas chambers before you know it." When had his one good hand reached out to mine? It was closed about my own, its fingers cold, its strength bruising, frightening. "What are we doing here? Rewriting history so that men like _him_ \- " He meant Marston, "can reshape the world to order? Going back to eliminate the opposition before it's even arisen? Assassinating our enemies in their cradles? _Are_ we?"

"Sam - " I made to draw my hand away; he let it drop, quickly, as though it burned him.

"Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to hurt you. But then - I didn't mean any of this. Verbeena - " His voice rising, rising, "I can't do this, I can't - I can't build this Project. It's _wrong_ , Verbeena. It's ... I can't, I _won't!_ "

"Sam ..." I said again, gently. _But you can, my love. You have, and you will, and you must_. "Sam - honey, when you're a little older, you'll understand ..."

That was quite the wrong thing to say. He looked at me again, withdrawing from me, a look I had once known well: head lifted, eyes hooded, mouth straight. "I'm not a child," he said icily. "And I do know right from wrong."  
 _  
'Knowing' isn't always 'doing' Sam. No matter how hard you try. No matter how high your motives._

 _Remember what paves the road to hell?_

"Okay," I said, for want of anything better. "Okay. When you get back to your own time, Sam, you do what you think you must. But don't be surprised if it all turns out essentially pretty much the same."

"Congruent futures, not divergent?" Quite fortuitously, I'd managed to distract him; he stopped panicking and looked thoughtful. "It's one theory," he agreed after a moment, calmer now. "Remove one dictator, another one arises and the next world war still goes ahead ... I don't know. There's something kind of sloppy about it, kind of lazy thinking - sort of an 'okay, so why bother?' kind of attitude. Besides," he went on, "it reminds me of that godawful poem, you know the one?" He glanced up, quirking one of his wary grins. "Do you think the same applies to quantum physicists? If I became a used car salesman instead, would someone else build a Project Quantum Leap? Would you be sitting here talking to him, right now?"

Project Quantum Leap? He'd picked that up out of the air. _Well, hello again, Sam!_

"I might if he was cute," I said thoughtlessly, and scrambled to cover my tracks. "Actually," I said quickly, evading the real question, "you'd make a pretty good used car salesman, Sam - the way you can just talk on, and on, and on ... Maybe you ought to consider it."

Which blatant diversionary tactic led to a storm of indignant protest and got him safely away from the implied repercussions of his future self's actions, off his unanticipated guilt trip, and back onto safe, familiar territory. We decided that there was almost nothing that Sam couldn't be, if he set his mind to it ("But I don't want to work construction, Verbeena, I get vertigo!"), and, from there, the little snake somehow managed to get our rôles reversed and led me on to talking about myself ...

Which led to an awful lot of fast thinking on my part. A great deal of prevarication, and a good many sins of omission. It's called 'tact'.

It's called 'survival'.

And somehow, somewhere among all the lies and excuses and diversionary tactics, I found myself promising to make up to him for the Thanksgiving meal he was missing at home.

Temporary insanity. I don't know how else to account for it. Good lord almighty, I don't _cook!_

***

Back in Elk Ridge in 1969, things were going swimmingly - in so far as they ever do. Sam-in-the-past had settled down, resigned himself to Al's _che sarà sarà_ philosophy, and seemed to be behaving himself.

Here in Stallion's Gate in 1997 ... I was doing the best that I could.

Sam was looking a lot better for a day's enforced rest; he'd regained some of his colour, and was back on his feet, wobbly but determined. He found his brightest smile for me as I backed through the door of his room, my arms full.

I dumped the tray I was holding on a side table and reached for his injured hand. "How's it feeling?"

He grimaced wanly. "Not great. I didn't think I'd ever play the piano again - "

Not a joke. In Sam's case, that would be a genuine loss.

" - but Al says that I won't take it back to my own time. It'll just be like it never happened." He tried to smile. "I guess he knows what he's talking about. I hope so."

I hoped so too. So, Al had decided that he _could_ cope with both Sam Becketts, had he? I was glad to hear that. I would consider it progress, and maybe consider taking one or two of the black marks off that report of his.

"Now," I went on briskly, "I did bring dinner. I said I would. _But_ , before you get too excited, let me just warn you that this is Thanksgiving dinner pretty much the way that _my_ people used to serve it up."

He was instantly suspicious. "Your people being - ?"

No, he wasn't going to bite. A man like Marston would've bitten. But Sam, thank god, would never be a man like Marston. Not at forty three, and not at sixteen. I'd been planning to spin him some nonsensical myth about life in de ghetto and then spring the truth on him, but Sam wasn't going to play. I sighed. "Okay, you got me. My dad was a research archaeologist. My mom was a concert flautist. They were both out of the country nine months out of every year - not always the same nine months, either - and we lived in an hotel, when I wasn't away at school." I waved him over to the table and displayed the sad little microwaved packages I'd brought in with me: Thanksgiving dinner à la Lean Cuisine. " _All_ our meals came from room service. I was eighteen years old and at college before I discovered that there was such a thing in the world as hot food."

He wasn't disappointed. Not a bit. "TV dinners! You still have TV dinners!" He caught the look on my face - _'You **like** TV dinners?!'_ \- and started to laugh. "Mom thinks that they're the beginning of the end - the downfall of civilisation as we know it. I think they're great. Look - " He started unwrapping, using his good hand, "you’ve got your little compartment for your mashed potatoes ... and your little compartment for your peas ... and - "

" - and it's all white and bland and tastes exactly like the plastic that it comes in," I finished, and rescued his tray for a moment so that I could cut his meat up for him. "Child, you're sick. I bet you enjoy airplane food, too."

He shrugged, his mouth full. Mom Beckett's influence was still strong enough that he finished chewing and swallowing before he said, "I've never flown. Not yet. But that's great, you know? Because now I've got something to look forward to."

"Other boys look forward to their first car, or their first paycheque, or their first date," I sighed. "But nooo - not Sam Beckett. _He's_ looking forward to airplane food. Why did I know that _you_ would have to be different, Sam?"

He went quiet then, turning his fork over and over in his mashed potatoes until I reached out and rapped his knuckles. "I look forward to those things too," he mumbled, and looked quickly away from me. Then, as quickly, he looked back, and he said, the words seeming to spill out of him, "I thought about you all last night. I couldn't stop thinking about you. All today, all I've been doing is waiting to see you again. Verbeena, I - "

"Sam." _Oh, Sam. Damn you, why couldn't you be thirty years older?_ I made the rebuff as gentle as possible, knowing that any damage I might do now would stay with him all his life, however the Leap back might Swiss-cheese his memory. "Don't say any more. You'll only regret it."

"No!" he said urgently. "No, I - "

I laid my hand across his own; the lines on mine, his own, to his eyes, smooth-skinned. "Look," I said, and gestured. "I'm an old lady, Sam. Almost as old as your own mother."

He said fervently, "You're _beautiful_ , Verbeena. And you're kind, and you're wise." His eyes were fixed pleadingly on my own. "You saved my life, you know. Doesn't that mean that now you're responsible for me forever?"

"Only in Tibet," I said quellingly.

He smiled. "I've always wanted to go there ..." He drew me up by our joined hands, turned me to face the wall. "Look."

Hazy in the whiteness of the tile, our reflections gazed back at us. My own, familiar one, the face that I saw growing older, tireder, every day -

And his. Sam's. _My_ Sam's.

It was tempting then, to succumb to the fantasy. To pretend, to accept, to allow this to be.

You see, I never told him how much I loved him. Even when we were in bed together, even when he was inside me, there was still so much of him that he kept private, hidden from me. I thought that it would embarrass him to hear that he was the most precious thing in my life, every sickening, corny, hackneyed sentiment - lilacs in spring, roses in Picardy, the moon in June - gilt-edged and touched with magic and remade fresh and new. He was walking wounded after what that woman did to him; brittle and fragile, and all that I could do was to try and show him how much I cared in my every word, every action, every touch ...

And it wasn't enough. Was it, Sam?

All that I could do was not enough to hold him.

And I would do anything now, if only I could have him back.

 _Anything._

Like I said. I'm not god. I'm just a poor, hard-working shrink. Who makes mistakes. A lot of them.

 _Physician, heal thyself!_

The man in the reflection murmured, "Verbeena - " and reached blindly, one-handed, for me; clumsy, inexperienced. Wholly endearing. "I want ..."

Something happened then that never happens, never, ever happens, not ever. Not to me.

My control snapped.

 _He_ wanted? Well, so did I want, and I couldn't, or, to be more precise, I shouldn't, _have_.

I've done the adult thing. Through all of the Leaps, through all of my life, I've done the civilised, the rational, the decent, the _only_ thing.

Where has it got me?

Time for a little primal therapy.

And _screw_ the damage!

I slapped his hand away. His eyes flew open, shocked, and he backed off, staring.

"'I want ...'" I mimicked fiercely. "Those are your two favourite words, aren't they, Sam? You _always_ want, and you always _get_ \- because we're dumb enough, or loyal enough, or trusting enough, to give you what you want. That's all you've done, all your life - just chased _your_ dreams, _your_ ambitions, straight ahead down the line like a steamroller, never looking to see where you're treading, not even caring about the dust you're stirring up, and god help anyone who gets in your way - and god help the rest of us, left behind to pick up after you. Just look at _this_ \- " I turned, sweeping, indicating the MedCentre, meaning _everything_ , the whole Project, from the first temporary site office to the new blinds in the conference room. "All _this_ \- all built for _you_ , because _you_ wanted to travel in time. And when we'd built it for you, what did you do but run away on your own, not a word, no excuse, no apology, and leave _us_ behind to pick up the pieces? You self-centred bastard, when are you going to learn that when they told us that _in the beginning was the word_ , the word was _not_ 'Sam'?!"

Have you ever opened an elevator door - one of the old-time ones, without the safety devices - and discovered that the car's not there, that there's nothing ahead of you but a sheer, sickening, bone-shattering drop into sheer nothingness?

That was how Sam was looking at me. As though I'd thrown him a lifeline, and the lifeline had suddenly turned into a snake and turned around and _bitten_ him. "I'm sorry," he offered; hesitant, scared, sounding no more than the sixteen years that he was.

And I didn't care. _You son of a bitch, you broke my heart!_

"Sorry? Ah!" I _didn't_ care. I threw up my hands, stalked away in disgust, found myself _pacing_ , actually pacing, pacing up and down like a caged leopard, and finding in myself a curious craving for raw meat ...

Sam seemed to guess something of the kind. Anyhow, he had the good sense to remain silent while I walked off my frustrations. _Some_ of my frustrations.

"Verbeena?" he finally ventured. I turned my head to look at him. He'd crept back to the bed, was crouched up in one corner, knees to chest, his injured arm cradled in his good one, clutching the hem of the sheet like a security blanket. Maybe he thought he could hide under it. Or use it to trip me while he ran for cover.

"What?" I demanded. I wasn't sure I was ready to come back down yet. It had been years since I'd been able to work up such a good anger toward anyone - god, even when I was five years old I'd already calmly accepted that my parents would never be home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or my birthday, and had just gotten on with my life - and it would be a shame to waste it.

Sam, rotten brat that he is, had other ideas. "If I told you that you're beautiful when you're angry, would you break my neck?"

He was either very brave, or totally crazy. No-one has ever been entirely certain where Sam Beckett's concerned.

"Yes!" I said forcefully.

He slid off the bed and moved over to me, cautiously keeping just beyond arms' length, watching me warily, slantwise. "Am I really that bad?" he asked.

" _Yes!_ " How many times did I have to say so? "Yes, Sam, you really are." I looked up at his face, hardened my heart against the pleading in his eyes. I had given in to that look once too often. At _least_ once, and almost certainly more. "All your life you've always gone your own way, and there was nothing anyone else could do but to step aside or be trampled. Sam, everyone loved you - we couldn't help it, you've always had more than double your fair share of charisma - but I'm not sure if many of us really liked you very much. It's hard to like someone who regards the rest of the world as roadkill."

As soon as I'd said it, I wished I hadn't. He's single-minded, sure, can be inconsiderate, but he would never deliberately hurt anyone.

It's just that ... accidents happen. Every battle has its casualties.

But the look in Sam's eyes now was the look of a war orphan, sitting by the roadside and watching his world go up in flames, and, hard as my heart may sometimes be, there was no way it was going to be proof against that. "I'm sorry," he said again, his face and voice as earnest as only a well-meaning sixteen-year-old's can be. "I'll try - " He laid a hand, open, across his own heart. " _I'll_ try to do better ... this time around." He looked into my face, questioning, cautious. "That is ... if you want me to. If you think I should." And he smiled, slow and sweet and shy, and, god _damn_ my lousy hormones, suddenly it was daybreak all over the world and the sun was shining and the birds were singing, there were probably cuddly fluffy _bunny rabbits_ , for god's sake, grazing away under the trees ... do rabbits graze? "If you think our grandfathers will ever forgive us ...?"

I don't know when he stopped being an arm's length away; when he stopped being so much as a hand's breadth away. Suddenly he was just _there_ and, somehow, I was disinclined to ask any stupid questions.

"Sam," I told him, "next time we meet - just remember, will you, how lucky you are to have found someone who just _occasionally_ knows what the hell you're talking about." I wrapped him up in what was supposed to be a comforting, non-threatening, affectionate hug with no other overtones than simple friendship. Well, it certainly started _out_ that way, and it wasn't entirely _my_ fault if it changed its nature somewhere along the line. Not that I was complaining.

 _And as we parted I felt inside me something alter: a shifting, a settling, as though one grain of sand from time's hourglass had fallen out of place, creating a subtle change in the familiar pattern ..._

Time changes us, moving us forward from the hour of our birth to our last dying breath. But we, too, with our every word, our every action - we ourselves, only by being: we change time.

I wondered, as I put him firmly - reluctantly - away from me: what had that change been?

All I had to do was to step through the door and wander down a corridor; check out the names on the doorplates, look for the familiar faces ...

Time. There would be time enough for that, too.

But for now ... for me, and for Sam - for _my_ Sam - for now, there was time only for us.

**********

  


**********

 

 _Lisa was waiting outside when he finally stepped out of the locker room; leaning oh-so-casually against the corridor wall in her pink minidress, one knee bent, arms folded, gum snapping, blonde ponytail flying. He looked at her blankly, having no idea what she was doing there. But then, he wasn't entirely certain how he'd got into the shower, either. Nor did he know what he was doing in school - hadn't he been on his way home? - or where his parents and, more particularly, his brother had suddenly sprung from. Or, for that matter, where Thanksgiving had gone._

 _What was **really** puzzling him was why, if he'd supposedly just played and won the opening game of the basketball season, he wasn't the slightest bit out of breath ... _

_And there was the memory of pain in his left arm. Pain that, so far as he could tell, there was nothing to account for._

 _He said, cautiously, "Hi, Lisa."_

 _She grinned at him, showing perfect white teeth against the fading but still even tan of her face. She was supposed to be the prettiest girl in the school, he remembered; so he guessed he should be flattered that she seemed to be waiting for him. And he was. Sort of._

 _Just ... hadn't there been ... something? Some **one** ...? _

_No, whatever the thought had been, it was gone. And that, too, was unusual enough to be intriguing._

 _"So," Lisa said, "did you make up your mind? Are you taking me to the dance, or are you gonna stand me up?"_

 _"Dance?" He looked down at himself. Dressing, he had hardly registered the clothes he was putting on. Now he looked and saw, not the jeans and sneakers he was expecting, but his one good pair of shoes - **a size too small now,** he thought painfully, and winced. **Sorry, Mom!** \- and one of Tom's old suits. He probably looked like a scarecrow, he realised, resigned, but if Lisa didn't care ..._

 _And Lisa certainly didn't **seem** to care. _

_"I guess I'm taking you to the dance," he said, and he managed a hesitant smile. Which, had he but known it, qualified as one of the five most wonderful things that Lisa had ever seen in all of her seventeen years. She took it as encouragement to reach out and pull him into her arms._

 _The kiss that he gave her then was somewhere in the region of the second best experience that Lisa had ever had. But then, Lisa had once visited an uncle up in Canada, and had seen the aurora borealis._

 _It was widely speculated amongst those who took an interest in such matters that Sam Beckett was still a virgin (and, according to one school of thought, probably always would be - although Lisa had her own designs in this direction). But, if that kiss was anything to go by, then Sam Beckett was hiding some deep, dark - **interesting** \- secrets._

 _Lisa could hardly wait to find out what other surprises he might have in store._

 _"But I still don't get it," Sam said, puzzled, when he got his breath back. "I just don't understand ... what a girl like **you** could see in - well, in someone like me."_

 _Lisa smiled knowingly, and let her hands slide deliberately downward. He jumped a little, but otherwise didn't seem to object._

 _"Potential," she said. And she kissed him again. Much, much slower, this time._

 _The aurora borealis didn't stand a chance._

 _And so it began. Over and over again; forever and for always ..._

 _World without end._

 _Time is._

 _Time was._

 _Time ... may be._

***


End file.
